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The year’s first blanket of snow dropped from the skies two days before Valentine’s Day, but it soon washed away — and on the ground, heartbreak abounded. Barack Obama spoiled the Clintons’ romantic holiday, beating out Bill for a Grammy (with his reading of The Audacity of Hope) and stomping Hillary in eight primaries. Roger Clemens told a congressional committee that best bud Andy Pettitte was mistaken in his recollection that Clemens took human growth hormone, maintaining that wife Debbie was the only family member who’d done so.
The Feds announced that six detainees held at Guantánamo, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, faced the death penalty; Representative Anthony Weiner asked why the trials could not be held in Manhattan instead of Cuba. Mayor Bloomberg called global warming a greater threat than terrorism. Aquatic-transport fans found a ferry godmother in City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who insisted that water taxis be explored further as alternatives to subways and buses. The projected price tag on the still-hypothetical Moynihan Station soared past the $3 billion mark, while Governor Spitzer warned that heavy budget cuts were on the horizon. A 500-pound man sued firefighters who he claimed dropped him down a flight of stairs.
Patty Hearst’s French bulldog bagged a ribbon at the Westminster dog show but lost the big prize to Uno the beagle. A Canadian tourist asphyxiating in a leather collar and high heels had to be rescued from an S&M club on 33rd Street. A BlackBerry service outage left itchy digits idle, while a lucky few ticket holders caught Patrick Stewart red-handed in his sold-out run as Macbeth at bam. I.M. Pei’s borderline brutalist Silver Towers at NYU are up for landmarking. Striking late-night writers returned to work in midtown (30 Rock’s Tina Fey signed on to host Saturday Night Live’s February 23 return engagement). And Roy Scheider, whose coolly intense performances in Klute, The French Connection, and Marathon Man helped define the New York noir era of the seventies, died at age 75. —Mark Adams
